Windows 11: The Ars Technica review | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11: The Ars Technica review

arstechnica.com

Dear Microsoft, you've gone astray. Please:

1) Disable ALL telemetry by default unless user explicitely opts in.

2) Let me use it without a cloud account (required on Home version).

3) Set out hardware prerequisites based on technical capabilities, not policy doctrine. I shouldn't need hacky workarounds to install without UEFI Secure Boot & CPU-embedded TPM 2.0, and I don't appreciate the threats about doing so.

4) Quit with the stupid naming WTF Windows 11 R2D2.

5) Restore absolute control to me as to when you may apply updates and break my computer.

6) Stop hiding the useful controls (e.g. network adapter IP address) under increasing layers of intermediary screens.

6) Cut the bloat. Focus on delivering a solid kernel that doesn't crash, performance improvements (your work is not done until my PC cold starts as quickly as my car), and intuitive tools to maintain and troubleshoot my system and applications.

Do all this and I'll happily consider giving up Windows 7 and returning to the fold.

Running Windows 7 is completely irresponsible as it is EOL-ed and not receiving security patches. You can rant and rave all you want but you're a security risk to yourself and to your company if you bring that machine into work.

If you hate the direction Windows took and can't bear to run a version that isn't EOL then it's time either to move to a Linux distribution or switch to macOS. You were never in control of any product made by Microsoft (and you won't be if you switch to macOS). Yelling at them isn't going to change that.

You raise a legit concern around security patches, but may not be aware some of us are still on extended security updates through to 2023.

For those less fortunate, third parties like 0patch are backporting many critical ones to Win 7. If you pay attention to the disclosed vulnerabilities several can be mitigated in other ways (e.g. registry tweaks, removing compromised components like ATMFD.DLL, etc). And without suggesting reliance on their goodwill, I should point out Microsoft quietly released a couple updates to the general public since their official EOL, and has made exceptions in the past for dire emergencies (e.g. XP / WannaCry).

Using an out-of-support OS isn't anyone's first choice, and I'm not endorsing it. But labeling me "completely irresponsible" feels hyperbolic considering you have zero knowledge of where this is being run, the overall security posture, or a complete picture of the tradeoffs informing the decision. Fresh zero-days are discovered all the time even for the latest software, and a good defense in depth lets you mitigate for weakness in one layer by bolstering others. I've encountered knee-jerk reactions like yours before when dealing with genuine circumstances impeding upgrade, and they tend to dissipate after working closely with those concerned to shed a bit more light.

I wish Linux were a viable substitute, but for various reasons that isn't always the case (e.g. unsupported software/hardware, investment in platform). In the meantime, just because Microsoft purports their new dogfood is better than the old one doesn't mean I'm going to blindly eat it.

There are circumstances where your reaction is warranted. But I'm not a guy trying to bring a feral Win 7 laptop into your corporate network, so, with respect: back off!

You make these requests as if they're not all antithetical to Microsoft's bottom line

Yes to all Points!! Microsoft wants to play the platform game and will loose (once again).

Hey Microsoft, since your a Dino your incapable of changing anything, so why not make the best desktop OS, and focus on stuff like cloud? And please stop with that shameful Microsoft app store, c'mon what a shame not even the search-bar works.

I know it's a third party tool so it is not going to be as good as having the settings you want as a default but Winaero Tweaker can address a majority of these issues for you.

https://winaero.com/

2 clicks and a reboot to disable all telemetry, disabling windows update so that it must be run manually, and there are a few tweaks to windows explorer that will return some of the function that used to come in Windows 7.

If you include running some of the default Windows App uninstaller scripts you can purge a good chunk of the bloat out of Windows 10 and feel a little better about having the security patches that Windows 10 has above Windows 7.

Cool! Thanks for the tip. I've used Classic Shell / Open Shell before but haven't tried WinAero Tweaker.

You described Linux. All the reasons and then some on why I switched to Linux and use Windows strictly for gaming.

The point of Windows 8 was to make Windows suitable for mobile devices; the point of Windows 10 was to make a step or two back. The point of Windows 11 is beyond me.

Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

>The point of Windows 11 is beyond me.

The Marketing Video was pretty good, for the first time in my life Microsoft really touched my heart, a real lifestyle brand, something to life for....NOT

The point of Windows 11 is beyond me.

Much tighter integration with their online services and cloud offerings.

Basically it's stuff that I'll put on my firewall's block list then. I don't need third party junk eating up my bandwidth even if it's not that much. I get to decide what goes in and out of my computer. If they don't like that then they can just brick their OS and I'll just go over to Linux and be done with it. It's getting to the point that I might as well get my PC from a rental service if I can't make changes to it in a way that make it mine.

Edit: As for the rental part, if it was more economical for them to do so I'm sure they'd have a Windows PC rental service lol. The next best thing probably would be 0% APR financing like how mobile phones are done now. It's a weird world we're going into.

> The point of Windows 11 is beyond me.

Marketing for starters; whether Windows 11 is good, bad, or neutral: everyone is certainly talking about it.

Link is to the comments.

Here’s the article link: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/windows-11-the-ars-t...

I wonder if it fixes the hibernate/sleep issues described in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952.

Does search finally work? ( I use search everything for that)

Using since first dev build, search absolutely was not improved.

Unsure if this will be helpful but I found disabling the online part of windows search made it actually usable. Assuming you are only wanting to search locally.

You can try "everything". A search tool that works very well for me.

That's search everything, i mentioned ;)

Yeah, it's great!

Ps. I use it with this: https://github.com/stnkl/EverythingToolbar

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